Pandora is an Internet radio service launched in 2005, it allows you to enter a favorite artist or song and the service then matches you up with similar tunes and artists. Other services, such as Rhapsody and Napster, have similar features with their custom radio channels, but Pandora does it a little differently than most. Pandora is the offspring of the Music Genome Project, an undertaking designed to analyze music and determine what makes people favor a particular song or artist, and then match people with music they might also like.

Due to licensing constraints Pandora can no longer allow access to most listeners located outside of the US. Here’s what comes up accessing the Pandora web site from Brazil. Apparently only the US, the UK and Canada still have this service available to public.

That’s really too bad because Pandora is/was a great way to listen to music you wouldn’t listen to otherwise and it does follow your tastes to a certain extent.

Reportedly the music majors have put pressure in order to stop broadcasting in those countries where there still are no agreements on copyright licences. In the US there’s a law that regulates copyright on the internet and other digital platforms, the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA). Pandora made agreements in the UK and is working in the same direction with other countries.

Now the Pandora web site is being restricted to listeners verifying the user IP address. Workarounds like configuiring the browser to access through a proxy that’s located in the US, or through sites that allow anonymous surfing are probably not worth the effort.